Western Digital may be a familiar name within the world of memory, making many of the hard drives inside computers and other devices today. the corporate has announced a replacement architecture called OptiNAND that meshes traditional hard drives with flash storage capacity to deliver performance and increased areal density. OptiNAND drives are essentially a mixture of a standard disk drive with an iNAND embedded flash drive.
OptiNAND drives are aimed toward high-density environments like intelligent video surveillance, NAS suppliers, hyperscale cloud providers, et al. . the merchandise was explicitly designed to deliver high capacities, performance, and reliability needed to store large amounts of knowledge for extended periods.
Western Digital’s new memory device uses a triple-stage actuator and HelioSeal technology to deliver a storage capacity of two .2 terabytes per platter. The shipping of samples of drives using the new technology featuring nine discs inside for combined 20 terabytes of storage capacity. the corporate says the new drive extends capacity gains using proven PMR technology.
OptiNAND technology doesn’t use flash storage to store user data. Instead, the drive adds vertically integrated iNAND combined with enhanced firmware algorithms and SoC innovations to supply higher capacity, performance, and improved reliability. The drive technology offloads expanded metadata to the iNAND, enabling more per-inch tracks, increasing areal density.
The technology also improves drive latency by utilizing optimizations within the drive firmware that require fewer adjacent track interference refreshes. The tech also reduces the necessity for write cache flushes when the drive operates in write cache-enabled mode. In addition, western Digital says the technology is more reliable, allowing 50 times more data to be retained in an emergency power-off scenario. The new drive architecture leverages OptiNAND to be offered across the portfolio of Western Digital drives and storage platforms, with market-specific and purpose-built products being added to its portfolio later within the year.
